


No Earthly Thing

by tepidspongebath



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Curses, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Story: The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2018-09-24 15:13:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9767609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tepidspongebath/pseuds/tepidspongebath
Summary: "Let me see. What can I give you?” She tilted his head back so she could look into his eyes. “You mislike your feelings yet you are ruled by them - chemical impulses, is it? And you like to think yourselfother,different from ordinary mortals.” She smiled, small and satisfied, to herself. “Yes. Yes, I can give you that.”Solving the murder of Brenda Tregennis wasn't what John had in mind when he suggested that Sherlock needed a holiday in the country. There weren't supposed to be chases by moonlight, faerie curses, or all these...wriggly things...





	1. Monday for Danger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [consultingsmartass (consulting_smartass)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/consulting_smartass/gifts).



> Many, _many_ thanks for contributing to Fandom Trumps Hate, and for the awesome plot bunny!

“I don’t see why you’re upset. Just last week you were saying a holiday in the country would do me good.”

“A _holiday_ , Sherlock. The sort of thing where you put up your feet and _rest_. And where any potentially healthy outdoor activities are conducted in broad daylight.” John swore softly as he stubbed his toe on an inconvenient rock. “The last thing I meant for you to do was go tearing after a murderer in the dark.”

“I’m not tearing after anyone. I’m...ambling.”

Along a Cornish country path in the middle of the night, thought John. With a head cold coming on. At least that big coat of his was warm.

Ahead of him, he saw the torch light wobble when Sherlock sneezed twice in quick succession. That was how he normally sneezed - it rarely occurred as a singular event - and this was apparently an unlucky thing to do before breakfast in Cornwall, if the waitress at that cafe this morning was anything to go by. John briefly wondered what it meant when you sneezed twice after supper on a Monday while you were on your way to confront a man who’d almost certainly killed his sister, then decided he was better off not knowing. The seaside town of Tredannick Wollas was, especially under a full moon on a windy night, the sort of place that had you remembering all those half-forgotten old stories and superstitions tucked away at the back of your mind. The trouble with this was that you also remembered why you kept them comfortably half-forgotten in the first place.

John shivered, and hurried after Sherlock without once looking to his right or his left.

“Bless you,” he said belatedly when he caught up with him. “You can’t keep going on like this, you know. You’ll burn out.”

“If I wanted your opinion, _doctor_ , I’d visit you at the surgery.”

“You do visit me at the surgery. Never with an appointment and mostly to drag me away, and I usually see to your medical needs at home, but I think I’ve earned the right to an opinion.” He went on before Sherlock could interrupt, “You have to slow down. You were working five cases at once before we left London, and it was sheer dumb luck that Forger Number Two got in Murderer Number Five’s way when he came at you with a bloody battle mace.”

“Yes, that was messy, wasn’t it?” Sherlock gave him a quick half-smile, made eerie by the unsteady light of the torch. “I see your point, John, but you know as well as I do that I’d never be able to sit still without a case. My mind rebels at stagnation. If you want me to relax, you’ll need to find me a good mystery. Or a hobby I can’t master in a few hours.”

John blinked and almost lost his footing. He’d had an idea or five in that direction, one of which involved Sherlock learning pottery, but he would never, never dare voice any of them. Firstly, four of those didn’t actually qualify as _hobbies_ unless you had a very specific set of interests; secondly, three of them required the participation of a second person and John knew himself well enough to know that he would have a terminal attack of envy if it wasn’t him; and this was compounded by the last problem, which was that he wouldn’t dream of offering to be that person. Not yet. He was working his way towards it, and he suspected Sherlock knew ( _of course he did_ ), hoped that Sherlock wouldn’t mind ( _he thought he wouldn’t_ ), but he knew it would kill him if he ever made the offer and it turned out he was _wrong_.

It was worth mentioning that the safest of John’s ideas was to teach Sherlock table tennis (he’d learned because of peer pressure in the army and it was harder than it looked), and that came with the danger of Sherlock attempting to fix the table to the wall with a knife.

“I suppose it’s lucky this case got you into the fresh air at all,” he said when he got his literal and figurative balance back.  

“A locked room mystery with one victim driven clean out of his senses and the other left dead without a mark on her body except for a look of terror on her face - how could I resist?”

“As I recall, you perked up when D.I. Roundhay said the devil must have done it.”

“Shame the devil turned out to be nothing more than the brother with a grudge, patience, and access to some interesting airborne poison. It was obvious once we found out about Brenda Tregennis opposing the sale of old family land - not a patch on Baskerville! The only thing I’m not clear on is this hawthorn twig in the window box when that particular species was absent from the garden” With the hand that wasn’t busy with the torch, Sherlock absentmindedly touched something in his coat pocket. John had no doubt that it was the bit of plant matter he’d lifted from the crime scene. “But we can ask Mortimer about that now. Look, there’s his house and there’s a light on on the ground floor - he must be up. How considerate, he’s saved us the trouble of flinging gravel at the windows.”

John followed Sherlock to the front door of the old farmhouse, not trying to ignore the sense that something was off - a useful feeling you ignored at your peril - but doing his best not to let it turn into full-blown panic that had him hauling Sherlock away by his coat collar. It did not help that Tregennis lived alone in a large old farmhouse surrounded by empty countryside where the best thing you could hope to encounter on a wild night like this was a Cornish approximation of Heathcliff.

And that was what had the hairs on the back of John’s neck standing at attention. The house was far too big for a single occupant, probably only three or four rooms saw regular use, and it was quite late, but it was nevertheless too still, too quiet. The flickering, orange quality to the light in the downstairs window did not help.

Sherlock picked up on it too, and he hammered on the door with particular urgency. When no-one answered, he sprang away to look in through the window. John stayed behind long enough to try the door, then to try and force it open when it proved to be locked, so he didn’t see whatever it was that made Sherlock give a shout of surprise and alarm. What he did see was a shadow peeling away from the stone wall by the window to reveal a person where there couldn’t possibly have been a person before.

It was a very small, raggedy person, and John tried to tell himself that that was why he hadn’t seen her, just as he was doing his best to convince himself that the green tinge of her skin could be blamed on the bad lighting. As for her owl-like eyes and shaggy eyebrows, well, nobody could help how they were made. But he couldn’t explain away the ears that came to points clearly visible through her windblown hair or the wickedly sharp teeth that showed when she grimaced at Sherlock. She was holding a dull red something that might have been a human foot or a truncated limb ending in a cloven hoof.

No, thought John. It wasn’t possible. Yet there she was.

Sherlock hadn’t seen her: he was busy rattling the window in an attempt to dislodge the latch. But he half-turned when John called out a warning, then turned all the way when he saw what was standing a scant foot away from him. John fully expected her to disappear, to turn out to be nothing more than a product of his imagination on overdrive and the eerie lighting, but she stayed still and fully visible long enough for Sherlock’s shoulders to stiffen in the way they did when his deductions turned up nothing but a string of question marks.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, falling back on the familiar tactic of imperious rudeness in the face of the unknown.

John knew that was wrong. All the stories said you were supposed to be polite. If you wanted things to end well, you kept a civil tongue in your head, and if you caught hold of the - _fairy_ , John’s brain supplied, _wee folk, people of the hills_ \- and held them fast, so much the better.

That much seemed to be true. The little woman flung a handful of dirt into Sherlock’s face, then kicked him hard in the shins while he was wiping the stuff out of his eyes. He had to grab hold of the window ledge to stay on his feet.

“It will go ill with you for spying on me!” she hissed, before turning on her heel and scampering off into the night.    

To John’s everlasting dismay, Sherlock righted himself and charged after her. He was, however, unsurprised to find himself charging after Sherlock.

“Tregennis is dead,” Sherlock called over his shoulder as John hefted himself over the low garden wall. “Just like his sister. Can’t have happened more than a few minutes ago, and if _she_ didn’t have anything to do with it, I’ll eat that damn hat!”

John wanted to say, “Wait a minute. Think about this, Sherlock, really _think_ . You’ve encountered what may very well be a supernatural being who’s probably just killed a man, who has definitely spoken to you using threatening language after committing what can safely be called assault while holding what looked to my simple, superstitious mind like a devil’s foot, and you want to _run after it_? Is this the kind of life choice you want to be making, Sherlock Holmes?”

What actually came out was “Wait a minute!” followed by an _oof_ as he landed awkwardly on the other side.

“Come on, John, we’re losing her!” Sherlock stopped long enough to make sure that John was following him, then took off with a new burst of speed.

But that wasn’t quite true. Yes, she stayed just beyond the torch light, sometimes disappearing entirely behind a dip in the land or a stand of trees, but she was always _there_ , like one of those mechanical hares at greyhound races. It should have been ridiculously easy to lose them, even if she wasn’t what John thought she was, and that was strange. Even suspicious.

He would have brought it up, but he couldn’t seem to catch up with Sherlock, damn those long legs of his, just as Sherlock couldn’t catch up with that - that _sprite, brownie, pixie..._

Oh. Oh shit.

They were being pixie-led. That was what it was called wasn’t it, being led astray through countryside by a being of sinister purpose and dubious morality? And didn’t it usually end off the edge of a cliff or in a nasty bog? There was a way around it, John was sure of that, and he’d remember it if he could just stop and think, or take out his phone and Google. He was fairly certain that rowan came into it but he’d be hard pressed to identify a rowan tree even in broad daylight (he was a doctor, not a botanist), and he vaguely remembered something about crusts of bread (apparently the packet of biscuits Sherlock always had in his coat wasn’t any good). There was also something about turning your coat inside out. John was on firmer ground there, only he couldn’t turn just _his_ jacket inside out, that might leave Sherlock to be pixie-led by himself, so if he could get to the man and tear his coat off, maybe - just maybe - all would be well.

John ran until his legs screamed and his bad shoulder started to join in, but slowing down wasn’t an option, especially not when the little woman slipped into a circle of standing stones. They weren’t very impressive as megaliths went: the tallest stone was probably Sherlock’s height, and they looked as if someone had forgotten to clear them away rather than having left them like that on purpose. That, or they’d been a group of completely pissed dancers caught kicking their heels up on a Sunday. It _looked_ benign, but John was sure no good would come of following her into it, which, of course, was exactly what Sherlock was about to do.

He didn’t have breath to spare for speaking, but he was finally close enough to reach the man. His fingertips brushed Sherlock’s shoulder just as his well-shod foot cleared the boundary.

Perhaps it was the bit of hawthorn in his pocket. Perhaps it was that John hadn’t actually been rude to the faerie. Either way, Sherlock sailed through the gap between two stones, coat billowing behind him, while John gasped and sputtered as he fell backward. It was as if someone had shut a door in his face, and when he tried to get through again, he encountered what felt like a wall of static that fizzed and sizzled and pushed him inexorably outward.

When he got back to his feet, he saw the two of them in the middle of the circle, facing each other in the moonlight. The woman was standing as though she was made of stone herself, and Sherlock was still trying to get his breath back.

“I take it you have something against the Tregennis family,” he said or, rather, panted.

“Wrong.” Not even Sherlock could pour that much disdain into the word. The faerie woman dropped the devil’s foot and crossed her arms over her chest, utterly unimpressed. “I did many favors for Brenda Tregennis, and she did me and mine many a good turn.”

“Saucers of milk? Pisky-pows on the roof? Or the occasional new suit?” At any other time, John would have been impressed that Sherlock had retained that much folklore in his mind palace. Right now he was more concerned that his main problem with all this folklore coming to life was that it had done murder.

She bared sharp teeth at him. “She cared for the land. Her brother would have sold our home for his debts, would have dug up the hills for the old kings’ gold if he could. I gave her a charm for protection, and he twisted it, made it work against her. He killed her. She died horribly.”

“So you killed him the same way.”

“What if I did?” Her hand shot out and up. She was just tall enough to reach the top of Sherlock’s head, her fingers twisting cruelly into his hair as she pulled him to his knees so that they were almost face to face. “I was old in Kernow ere your mother’s mother drew breath, little man. And you would interfere in my business?”

“Murder is _my_ business,” snarled Sherlock. He had his hands around the faerie’s skinny wrist, but he didn’t seem to be able to shift her. On the other side of the stone circle, John shouted at him to please, God, for once in his life, shut up.

“Is it? Then faerie gifts are mine.” Her grip tightened, Sherlock whimpered, and John tried to push his way through the awful, clinging barrier once more. She shot him a look of pure poison before turning her attention back to Sherlock. “Let me see. What can I give you?” She tilted his head back so she could look into his eyes. “You mislike your feelings yet you are ruled by them - chemical impulses, is it? And you like to think yourself _other,_ different from ordinary mortals.” She smiled, small and satisfied, to herself. “Yes. Yes, I can give you that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As noted in the tags, this story is built around _The Adventure of the Devil's Foot_. I'd forgotten just how atmospheric it was (Watson was quite poetic about the scenery), and that Holmes was making a study of the language...which Peter Berresford Ellis also does a bit in _Celtic Myths and Legends_ which I got a lot of the folklore from, and, look, I just really like linguistics. And faerie stories. 
> 
> Anywho, thanks muchly for reading!


	2. Tuesday, Kiss a Stranger

There should have been a clap of thunder. A flash of lightning. A shower of sparks, at the very least, or a suitably dramatic gust of wind.

Instead, there was a tiny shift in air pressure that John felt on his face as the lightest of breezes, and Sherlock was alone on his knees inside the stone circle without so much as a footprint - or a devil’s foot - to show that the faerie woman had ever been there. The barrier vanished too, and John got to him just as he pitched forward onto the turf.

He was breathing and responsive, and he tried to stand by himself, even if he did need John’s help to get to his feet. That would have to be good enough for now. John didn’t like his ragged breaths or his unfocused eyes, and the way he was _not_ talking was particularly worrying. You could practically hear the gears turning in his head underneath his usual silences — even when all those gears were keeping up was a constant clatter of _bored, bored, BORED_ — and the complete and utter lack of comment in the face of all this strangeness was enough to have John reaching for his medical kit. But his kit was a long way off, and his first priority was to get them away from this place. Any further examination would have to wait until they were somewhere else, somewhere _safe._

‘Safe’, of course, being a somewhat relative term in this context, seeing as John didn’t know where they were or how to get back to the cottage they were renting for the week. (Having an entire cottage was extravagant, but Sherlock’s mouth had gotten them kicked out of Tredannick Wollas’s only hotel, and the proprietor happened to be friends with the people who ran the bed and breakfast.) He was sure the Tregennis house lay to the east of the village, since they’d needed to check a map before they set out, and it followed that going _west_ would get them closer to civilization than they currently were. So he took a moment to orient himself — easy, given the view of the clear night sky from inside the stones — pulled Sherlock’s arm over his shoulders, and led him out of the circle.

It was hard going. Sherlock’s feet were terrifically uncooperative, and John, steering for two, managed to get them entangled in the outlying branches of a twisted old thorn tree just beyond the stones. Being scratched and pricked all over didn’t help, but that was a minor annoyance compared to how Sherlock seemed to be putting more of his weight on John with each step until their sides were pressed together, and John could feel his chest rise and fall with each labored breath.

Eventually, John decided this was not to be borne all the way to the village. A convenient flat rock under what he guessed was an oak, going by the shape of the leaves, would have to do for ‘safe’. He could only hope there were no dead kings buried beneath it, or, if there were, that they wouldn’t mind him sitting Sherlock down on it for a spell.

“Don’t mind us, just passing through, we’ll be done in a second,” he muttered under his breath, just in case.

“What was that?” Sherlock almost sounded like his own sharp self, though he let his knees fold against the edge of the rock a little too readily.

“Nothing, just being polite.” John tried to keep his tone light as he brushed brown-gray bark from his jacket and peeled off his gloves. “You can’t have missed that hawthorn tree back there. At least I assumed it was hawthorn - definitely had enough thorns for it anyway. That explains your twig in the window box, right?”

He waited for an answer. When none was forthcoming, he murmured an apology in advance and bent to loosen Sherlock’s scarf and lay two fingers against that long throat. Sherlock flinched and drew back, but not before John felt feverish skin and an elevated pulse. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he shivered visibly and pulled his coat tighter about himself.

“God, what did she do to you?” John resisted the urge to put a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. It wouldn’t help, and would likely be unwelcome if that reaction was anything to go by. He checked his phone instead, and swore when he saw there wasn’t so much as a single bar. So much for that. “Can you walk? We might need to get to Tregennis’s house before we can call for help. It can’t be too far now.”

Sherlock sucked in a breath. For a moment there, it looked like he was on the verge of launching into one of of his deductions. John watched his face, careful not to shine the torch in his eyes, imagining - hoping - that he was calculating distances, estimating how much weight John could support over said distance, and how fast they could go in this light. And it felt like the world had betrayed him when all Sherlock said was, “What if I told you to run?”

“Run? From _what_?” John did grab him by the shoulders then, and very nearly shook him. “You’re insane if you think I’m going to leave you here.”

Sherlock gave a hard, hollow bark of not-quite laughter and made to get away from John, who was having none of it. He accepted that Sherlock could be difficult about examination and treatment, the receiving thereof, and sometimes he was willing to wait him out, if only to avoid having to sit on the man while biting off lengths of sticking plaster, but this wasn’t a small matter of a cut finger or a bruised shin. So he put a hand on Sherlock’s face, willing him to see sense and trying to peer into his eyes at the same time, because something seemed to be off there - were the pupils too wide or was that down to the darkness?

And this made Sherlock groan and lurch forward, his spine a tight, uncomfortable curve, clutching desperately at something on his back.

It was alarming, but it was something John could deal with. He was kneeling on the stone behind Sherlock, pulling off his coat and jacket before he had time to make another pained noise. He was debating whether or not a quip about tearing off clothes in a dark forest would make removing Sherlock’s shirt any better when he saw the... _things_...moving under the expensive fabric.

There was no way to even begin to guess at their shape. All John could tell for certain was that there were a lot of them, and they were making the back of the shirt bulge enough to pull the hem out of Sherlock’s trousers. He bit his lip, steeling himself against images of snakes or great bloody leeches or larvae belonging to that giant bug thing from that one episode of _Doctor Who_ (you never knew, it was that kind of night), and yanked up the shirt.

He was, it turned out, wrong on all counts. Would that he had been right.

“Jesus Christ!” he yelped, scrabbling back and away from the writhing mass of things on Sherlock’s back. Attached to Sherlock’s back.

There was a word for them, really there was, it was floating right at the forefront of John’s brain, but he couldn’t use it, could he, not without admitting that he lived in a much stranger world than he cared to inhabit. You had to draw the line somewhere, didn’t you, and there’d already been the pixie and Sherlock knowing about pixies (which, frankly, had required a greater stretch of credulity), and this on top of everything else was simply too much impossibility for one night. He would have been happy to put all down as the result of some mad fever dream, only he didn’t think his brain could _ever_ come up with...with...

“Christ,” he said again, because heaven was a long way off and he might not have been heard the first time.

“I doubt he had anything to do with it,” said Sherlock. His voice was rough and his shoulders, or what John could see of them, were tense in a way that had little to do with the shirt bunched up under his armpits. “I’d hoped to be back at the cottage before investigating” —John caught the implicit _alone_ and let it pass without comment— “but since you’re there, tell me: how bad is it?”

“Pretty fucking bad, that’s what.” That was the knee-jerk reaction. Having gotten it out of the way, John swallowed and tried for something more useful. “They’re - she gave you - they’re bloody tentacles, Sherlock.”

There was silence under the oak as Sherlock thought this over, except for the fleshy sounds made by the tentacles ( _‘elongated flexible unsegmented appendages’, yes, that’s what they were_ ) as they moved over and around each other.

“ _Actually_ bloody?” he asked, removing his scarf, smoothing down the front of his shirt and starting to work shakily on the buttons.

“Er, no.” Now the initial shock and, indeed, mild horror had faded somewhat, John managed to inch closer without having to scream a bit, though he did have to swear heavily under his breath. He even managed to keep his hand steady on the torch as he peered past the things to the pale skin beneath. _It’s only Sherlock_. “No breaks in the skin, no inflammation either. They’re just... _there_. Does it - do they hurt?”

Sherlock shook his head as he took his shirt the rest of the way off. “It’s not so bad now that they’re not held down but don’t touch--”

The warning came too late. John was used to a certain degree of a liberty when it came to Sherlock’s body in various less-than-ideal situations (such as having to manhandle him onto the sofa, push him into a cab, or knock him to the ground as necessary), and he’d already gently, carefully pushed aside the coils of a tentacle sitting over his left shoulder blade to see how it was attached. It was quite warm under his fingers, an oddly familiar sensation he couldn’t place at the moment, but he was prevented from pursuing that line of thought by Sherlock dropping his head back and _moaning_.

“Sorry. Oh shit, sorry.” John dropped the thing, mortified. The last thing he’d wanted was to make it worse.

And the last thing he expected was for the tentacle to resist being dropped. It twisted back, curling around his wrist, fever-hot and _strong_ , much stronger than anything that size had a right to be, and so tight that John couldn’t shake it off, and when he let go of the torch and brought up his free hand to pry it off, another tendril seized _that_ wrist as well.

John felt that this was as good a reason as any to abandon all pretense of competence and start panicking for true. He would have done it too, if there’d been time for anything more than putting up a token struggle as the other tentacles picked up on the idea of grabbing John Watson. They coiled around his chest, his legs, his waist, pushing and pulling at once to swivel him around, haul him off the rock, and position him in an awkward half-crouch in front of Sherlock.

Who was not looking like himself. Or, rather, he was still identifiably Sherlock, despite being coatless, shirtless and scarf-less, with moonlight and moving leaves casting unearthly shadows on his bare skin. He had the hair and the cheekbones and the nose and basically everything you’d need to pick him out of a lineup, but John had never seen that expression on him before.

That look didn’t belong on Sherlock’s face. Not in real life. Not when that naked, thoughtless _wanting_ was the sort of thing _John_ wore in the kind of Sherlock-related fantasy he didn’t dare entertain when the man himself was in the flat. Somehow this was even more indicative of the fact that something was deeply, terribly wrong than the new appendages stretching from his back and creeping up John’s thighs.

“Sherlock?” It was still him, wasn’t it? The too-dark eyes, the tentacles pulling John along like a badly strung marionette — that was all down to the faerie woman, yes, but the working brain of Sherlock Holmes had to be in there. Somewhere.

“ _John_.”

Only that sounded more like someone out of his mind with lust than someone with a working brain. That one word sizzled through the night air, scorching molecules out of existence and if John had any doubts as to the intent behind that tone and that look, they vanished when the tentacle circling his waist squirmed, insinuating itself between his shirt and the top of his jeans, seeking skin. It was a small mercy that it had only found its way to his side where the most interesting thing it would encounter on its downward journey was a scar from his rugby days.

True, the tentacles around his thighs were starting to become better acquainted with his bottom, and another one was raising gooseflesh by rubbing back and forth over the back of his neck, but you had to look on the bright side of life, such as it was.

“Sherlock,” he said again, fighting to keep his voice even because shouting, he told himself, shouting would do no good out here where there was no-one to hear him, and when he couldn’t see how anyone else stumbling onto the scene would make it any better. “Is it you doing this? Because I don’t think—”

To be perfectly honest, John wasn’t sure what he didn’t think. There were a lot of things he _did_ think, all clamoring for attention, most of them to do with the fact that the tentacles, having become friendly with his arse, had slipped forward to say hello to other parts of his anatomy. There were frantic thoughts of _pressure_ and _warmth_ and _friction_ , and how a combination of these, along with his vision being filled with Sherlock bare-chested and panting and looking too damn beautiful to be allowed even in this state _right there, right in front of him_ , was eliciting a rather distressing reaction. There was a flare-up of concern because Sherlock’s breath hitched when John flexed his wrists against the restraining tentacles and he couldn’t be sure whether or not the appendages were hurting him. Though if they were, this did not stop them from dragging John to his knees, settling him in the space between Sherlock’s legs.

That was all John’s brain had space for, that and Sherlock laying his shaking hands on either side of his face. It was almost enough to keep him from looking down to ascertain the state of Sherlock’s trousers (he was already shamefully aware of what his own were like).

All of this was rendered utterly insignificant when Sherlock kissed him.

Sherlock.

Kissed him.

Was kissing him.

Because that was what it was called, wasn’t it? Sherlock mashing his mouth against his definitely counted as kissing, and he was kissing him hard, insistent bordering on aggressive, and under any other circumstances — any other circumstances _at all_ — John would have been more than happy to be on the receiving end of a kiss like that, sloppy though it was, from Sherlock, from a Sherlock who knew what he was doing, who was not acting under the influence of what John was sure qualified as an enchantment. And he would have liked it better if he hadn’t been steeping in a sort of bewildered terror ever since the Tregennis house, which was not a problem in itself, John operated quite well when steeped in bewildered terror, it was one of his better qualities, but it was a horrible state to be kissed in.

Or not. Perfectly good kissing could happen when one or more of the parties involved was bewildered or terrified or both, but that most emphatically wasn’t happening now, not when the thing sliding down John’s spine was the heavy curl of a tentacle instead of a giddy rush of hormones, accompanied by the chilly and certain knowledge that the faerie woman must be having a good laugh over this. And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

No, the worst of it by far was knowing that Sherlock would hate it. There was no way, in any universe, that he could possibly be enjoying this loss of his iron-clad self-control, or — John revised his opinion when Sherlock did something _breathtaking_ with his tongue — even if he was currently enjoying himself, he was bound to hate it later on. He might hate John too, for that matter, for letting it happen.

Wait.

That wasn’t quite right.

It wasn’t that John was so sure of where he stood with Sherlock, quite the opposite, really, firm lips on his own notwithstanding, but it _was_ Sherlock. He ran on facts and logic and cold reason, and, yes, he would hate this thoroughly and completely, but after that - _after that_ , and John was willing to wait for however long that took - he was bound to come to the logical conclusion that this was the very definition of circumstances beyond their control. There was no way they could have known they’d need to protect themselves against the fae in this, the twenty-first century, and even if it could be argued that they wouldn’t be in this mess if Sherlock hadn’t taken off after the pixie, that was immaterial at this point. John could only hope Sherlock would also understand that he hadn’t had much of a choice either.

And, well, it was _Sherlock_. If John had to be kissed while trapped in the embrace of amorous tentacles, there was no other person he’d rather be trapped by, even if this was a stranger Sherlock than usual. He could live with this, though he did carefully extend a middle finger for the pixie, in case she was watching, just to let her know she hadn’t done him any favors.

He closed his eyes as long fingers cupped the back of his skull, as the tentacle at the back of his neck slid down and under his collar. _It’s only Sherlock_.

And there were lips moving against his and a nose nudging his cheek, and he could lose himself in this and deal with the fallout in the morning, on Tuesday, if it wasn’t Tuesday already.

Time stopped, distended, stretched out like a rubber band snapped uncomfortably tight around one too many unpaid bills. John had no idea how long they stayed like that. It _felt_ like a small eternity, but it couldn’t possibly have been that long, surely they would have had to stop for breath if it had gone on for any significant length of time. He was starting to wonder if flipping off the faerie woman had inadvertently earned them a measure of extra punishment when a large black bird took off from the branches over their heads. Its cawing sounded a little like harsh laughter.

It made John skin-pricklingly aware of their situation, and it seemed to break through to Sherlock as well. John felt him start, heard his sharp intake of breath, and then slowly, slowly he let John go. It happened in increments: first, fingers disentangled from his hair, then Sherlock’s mouth left his with the softest of wet sounds. Finally, the tentacles followed suit a fraction of a second later, though the one in John’s trousers took a little longer to find its way out again.

That was a small slice of relief. John sank back onto his heels, quickly dropping his prickling hands onto his lap. He couldn’t quite get his fingers to spread properly, and was thus more thankful for a receding hard-on than he’d ever been in his life. The world slowed down as the panic and urgency seeped away, and John began to notice other things.  

Such as Sherlock not meeting his eyes. John wasn’t prepared to believe this was simply because he was busy trying to retrieve his clothes with the tentacles getting in the way, even if he could see that Sherlock’s skin was pebbling in the first gray light of dawn.

Well.

He had to say something. Sherlock was starting to wrap himself up in the kind of walled-up silence that could last for days, and that wouldn’t do, not now. He had to at least let him know it was all right.

Well.

No, it wasn’t all right. ‘All right’ had just gone and dropped over the horizon and damned if John knew when they’d be seeing it again. Definitely not for a while, he thought, his stomach giving a sickly lurch as he watched Sherlock gingerly peel a tendril from the Belstaff with finger and thumb, handling it no more than strictly necessary. _But_ they were both reasonably competent adults (more or less), and they would be able to work it out. Eventually. Somehow.

“Tregennis.” The name just slipped out. It wasn’t what John had meant to say, but it did have the effect of making Sherlock look at him. That was a start, at any rate, and it _was_ a pressing concern, even if the man had done murder.

“Yes. Him.” Sherlock sounded understandably distracted. “You’ll have to text Roundhay. Or call. Let him know.”

“Yeah. Right. Of course.” Ordinarily John might have grumped a bit over the casual assumption that he’d handle the business of communicating with local law enforcement, but it was too much of a relief to be talking. “Are you--?”

“Fine. I’m fine.” Sherlock nodded once for emphasis, tying his scarf in place. He had eschewed the shirt. “Fine,” he said again, as if repetition would make it true. “And, um, you?”

John had to think before he answered, “Could be worse. I think I’ve lost a glove, but - could be worse.”

“Right.” Sherlock tried to pull his coat on, gave up, and slung it over his shoulders instead. He pointed at something between the trees. “That’s Tregennis’s house over there. With the sun coming up, we can take the cliff path back to the cottage. Less people use it, and we’ll see them coming.”

“Okay.”

“Yes.”

“After you, then,” said John, getting to his feet. He extended a hand to help Sherlock up, but all he did was stare at it for a full second before handing John his bundled-up shirt and jacket. The torch was in there too, and John couldn’t help noticing how he’d avoided touching skin.

“Right.” Sherlock stood with a grunt, grimacing as he pushed a tentacle back under the coat. They were barely visible like that, even if they did make an odd sort of hump under the wool.

He set off, holding the coat closed and weaving on the path in a way that made John extremely glad of the railing between them and the precipitous drop immediately to their right. They said no more to each other, not even when they reached the cottage, where Sherlock locked himself in his room and John collapsed onto the sofa, rubbing dazedly at his mouth and trying not to think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally. I've been so, so slow this year, but I'm still here. (I ought to hang up a shingle with 'I ATEN'T DEAD' on it.)


End file.
